Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series eBook

Towards natives the Eurasian is cold, haughty, and
formal; and this attitude is repaid, with interest,
in scorn and hatred. There is no concealing the
fact that to the mild Gentoo the Eurasian is a very
distasteful object.

But having said this, the case for the prosecution
closes, and we may turn to the many soft and gentle
graces which the Eurasian develops.

In all the relations of family life the Eurasian is
admirable. He is a dutiful son, a circumspect
husband, and an affectionate father. He seldom
runs through a fortune; he hardly ever elopes with
a young lady of fashion; he is not in the habit of
cutting off his son with a shilling; and he is an
infrequent worshipper in that Temple of Separation
where Decrees Nisi sever the Gordian knots of
Hymen.

As a citizen he is zealously loyal. He will speak
at municipal meetings, write letters about drainage
and conservancy to the papers, observe local holidays
in his best clothes, and attend funerals.

The Eurasian is a methodical and trustworthy clerk,
and often occupies a position of great trust and responsibility
in our public offices. He is not bold or original,
like Sir Andrew Clarke; or amusing, like Mr. Stokes;
but he does what work is given him to do without overstepping
the modesty of nature.

[Most Eurasians are Catholics; but some belong to
the small Protestant heresies and call themselves
Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and what not. To
whatever creed they attach themselves, they are faithful
and devoted; but the pageantry, the music, the antiquity,
and the mystery of the ancient Church, draw forth,
with the most potent spells, the fervour of their
warm, emotional natures. They are never sceptical:
the harder a doctrine is to believe the more they like
it; the more improbable a tradition is the more tenaciously
they cling to it. They are attracted by the supernatural
and the horrible; they would not bate a single saint
or devil of the complete faith to rescue all the truths
of modern science from the ban of the Church.]

The Eurasian girl is often pretty and graceful; and,
if the solution of India in her veins be weak, there
is an unconventionality and naivete sometimes
which undoubtedly has a charm; and which, my dear
friend, J.H——­, of the 110th Clodhoppers
(Lord Cardwell’s Own Clodhoppers) never could
resist: “What though upon her lips there
hung the accents of the tchi-tchi tongue.”

A good many Eurasians who are not clerks in public
offices, or telegraph signallers, or merchants, are
loafers. They are passed on wherever they are
found, to the next station, and thus they are kept
in healthy circulation throughout India. They
are all in search of employment on the railway; but
as a provisional arrangement, to meet the more immediate
and pressing exigencies of life, they will accept a
small gratuity, [or engage themselves in snapping up
unconsidered trifles]. They are mainly supported
by municipalities, who keep them in brandy, rice,
and railway-tickets out of funds raised for this purpose.
Workhouses and Malacca canes have still to be tried.